This is a really disturbing video for a variety of reasons – mostly because it involves Bob Larson.
But what I’m really curious about here isn’t whether or not this woman was possessed by a demon, but rather how much did Larson charge to cast that “demon” out of her?
However much he charged, it was more than Jesus charged to drive out demons.
Just saying.
(Found at Christian Nightmares)
I’m not sure whether or not this Vanilla Ice remix was intended to be serious or not, but what I do know is, either way, it’s awesome.
Obviously, the audio quality could be better, but this is definitely one of my favorite Christian parodies ever.
I love Mormons.
As the quintessential example of American religion, they’ve always held a special place in my heart.
They’re wonderful people and (I mean this in the nicest way possible) their theological quirks entertain me to no end.
So, naturally I tuned into Brian Williams’ hosted NBC special on Mormonism last night. While it wasn’t particularly enlightening, in that I didn’t necessarily learn anything new about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, something did stick out to me.
Mormons take discipleship very seriously.
Say what you will about their heterodox theology, but I know of now particular Christian tradition that takes discipleship as seriously across the board as the Mormons seem to do. Obviously there are people in every Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox tradition that we can point to as devote disciples of Jesus, meaning that their faith isn’t defined by intellectual ascent, but by a particular way of life modeled after Jesus.
However, in most traditions these people seem to be the exception, whereas in the LDS church such staunch commitment to a particular way of life seems to be the norm.
I’m sure there are plenty of lax Mormons, but as I watched the NBC special last night it got me to thinking: Why do Mormons seem so much more committed to discipleship than the rest of us who claim to be Christians?
My first thought was maybe they just “believe more”, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the case, or the the very least, it’s not the whole story.
I think, and this is just my humble opinion, that the thing that may spur Mormons to such a staunch, across the board commitment to discipleship may be the most ironic thing about this most American of Christian faiths.
I’m talking about church discipline.
Church discipline is something none of us want to talk about and few of us do well, if at all. As good ‘ole American Christians, there are few things we loathe more than being told what to do. We see it as impinging on our freedom and for us, there is nothing greater than our freedom to do whatever we want to do.
So, any call the church makes to a particular way of life, that is to say when it comes to talking about things Christians “should” or “should not” do, we prefer to frame those calls as some sort of Christian electives that one may choose to participate in, but which are not “required” for life in the church. Our apparent fear being that if we demand too much, people will leave and then who will be left to fund our “sanctinasiums”?
Mormonism, though being a decidedly American faith, seems to have no regard for the American obsession with “total” freedom, nor do they seem to be concerned about people leaving because the Mormon life is “too demanding”.
For example, there is nothing we loathe talking about in church more than money. Jesus may have talked about giving away everything and the early church may have had communal property as one of its foundations, but today we would never think of requiring anyone to give. That, we think, would somehow taint the gift. And of course, there is nothing that will ensure empty pews faster than telling people they need to give away their money.
In the LDS church, however, tithing is mandatory, meaning not doing so will result in church discipline. This isn’t a greed issue on the part of the church, rather giving back to God is considered an essential part of Christian discipleship. In other words, Mormons give because they must. Not simply because church rules require, but because the grace of God demands a gracious response. That monetary response is then transformed into a church led and very literal response to Jesus’ feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and give the thirsty something to drink.
It’s almost as if they thought that Bonhoeffer guy was serious when he said that grace is costly.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like being disciplined anymore than anyone else does. It’s not fun. It hurts my ego. And it reminds me that I’m not perfect.
But, discipline is an essential element of discipleship. It shapes and forms us into the people we claim we want to be.
I’m not advocating that we suddenly start purging everyone from church membership rolls who fails to live up to so-called “Christian perfection”. Nor am I advocating the sort of totalitarian and graceless tactics we witnessed not so long ago at Mark Driscoll’s Mars Hill church.
However, I think that we do have a responsibility to hold one another accountable if indeed we are one Body. That accountability helps us to grow by guiding us away from those things that will harm us and towards the One who will save us. In other words, that sort of accountability isn’t just discipline, it is truly an act of love that flows out of a deep concern and care for the other.
Sure, that process can be painful and we’re bound to mess it up from time to time. And, sure, people will definitely leave rather than face discipline. But at the end of the day, I think whether or not we participate in church discipline comes down to whether or not representing Jesus to the world is something we take seriously. That is to do say, do we really care enough about the image of Jesus that is presented to the world to make sure that it is an accurate and faithful portrayal of Jesus?
As evangelicals, I think this comes down to accepting the fact that discipleship doesn’t happen at an altar. Discipleship is a way of life and because we that of life requires formation it will also discipline. It takes discipline in order to become a disciple and because we don’t like being corrected that discipline will at times be painful. This is why Jesus said ‘take up your cross’, not “take up your pew’.
Though pop theology would often have us believe otherwise, the Christian life is an active and difficult one. Living out that life requires guidance from those further down the path than us and at times it also requires that they help us find our way back to the path when we have strayed. Which means discipline shouldn’t be thought us as a negative thing, but as a good, healthy, and necessarily element of growth in the Christian life.
That is what real church discipline looks like. It doesn’t exist as a means of control, but, as odd as it may sound, as a way to serve. Done rightly, church discipline serves our need for guidance, structure, and direction; needs we all have whether we realize it or not if following Jesus is something we are really serious about.
Like the rest of us, I’m sure there are plenty of times when the LDS church drops the ball on church discipline. But if we can look past their less than orthodox theology and focus instead on how they manage to get so many of their people to be so dedicated to a particular way of life, then perhaps we can learn, or at least be reminded of the sort of discipline it takes to be a disciple of Jesus.
Then maybe, just maybe, church discipline will stop being such a dirty word.
Grace and peace,
Zack Hunt
This story is both funny and sad.
It seems that the elderly woman who took this restoration project into her own hands had the best of intentions, but in her effort to recreate the image of Jesus she created a mess.
If you ask me, there’s a sermon here just waiting to be preached.
-Los Angeles Times
Art experts are trying to salvage a beloved Spanish fresco of Jesus Christ that was disfigured by an amateur restoration that went miserably awry.
Spanish media reported that an elderly woman, upset by the deterioration of the aging 19th century fresco in the Sanctuary of Mercy Church in the town of Borja, decided to fix it.
The unhappy results were perhaps most memorably compared to “a crayon sketch of a very hairy monkey in an ill-fitting tunic” by the BBC. Spanish jokesters have christened the revamped work once known as “Ecce Homo” -– Behold the Man -– as “Ecce Mono” -– Behold the Monkey.
Taking a more sober tone, the Centro de Estudios Borjanos described as ““unspeakable” its first sight of the redone fresco weeks ago, while doing an inventory of religious art in the area. Though the fresco is not believed to be unusually valuable, it was treasured in the town.
One day soon I hope to have the chance to visit the Holy Land.
Although, I’m pretty sure skinny dipping in the Sea of Galilee will no be part of the agenda….
By JAKE SHERMAN and JOHN BRESNAHAN, Politico
The FBI probed a late-night swim in the Sea of Galilee that involved drinking, numerous GOP freshmen lawmakers, top leadership staff — and one nude member of Congress, according to more than a dozen sources, including eyewitnesses.
During a fact-finding congressional trip to the Holy Land last summer, Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.) took off his clothes and jumped into the sea, joining a number of members, their families and GOP staff during a night out in Israel, the sources told POLITICO. Other participants, including the daughter of another congressman, swam fully clothed, while some lawmakers partially disrobed. More than 20 people took part in the late-night dip in the sea, according to sources who were participants in the trip.
“A year ago, my wife, Brooke, and I joined colleagues for dinner at the Sea of Galilee in Israel. After dinner I followed some Members of Congress in a spontaneous and very brief dive into the sea and regrettably I jumped into the water without a swimsuit,” Yoder said in a statement to POLITICO. “It is my greatest honor to represent the people of Kansas in Congress and [for] any embarrassment I have caused for my colleagues and constituents, I apologize.”
Travis Smith, Yoder’s chief of staff, told POLITICO “Neither Congressman Yoder, nor his staff, have been interviewed by the FBI.”
These GOP sources confirmed the following freshmen lawmakers also went swimming that night: Rep. Steve Southerland (R-Fla.) and his daughter; Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.) and his wife; Reps. Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.), Jeff Denham (R-Calif.) and Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.). Many of the lawmakers who ventured into the lake said they did so because of the religious significance of the waters. Others said they were simply cooling off after a long day. Several privately admitted that alcohol may have played a role in why some of those present decided to jump in.
Today begins a new chapter in my life.
In just a couple of hours I will head down to New Haven for orientation at Yale Divinity School.
I haven’t been in school for a few years now, but I think my excitement, at least at this point, is winning out over my anxiety about getting back into the swing of going to classes, writing papers, and taking tests. Classes actually start next Wednesday, so we’ll see if my excitement is still trumping my anxiety by then.
This week will be all about getting “oriented” to life at Yale. Apparently there is a lot to get oriented to as orientation lasts an entire week.
Now, don’t hear me wrong. I’m not complaining about the length of orientation. Like I said, I haven’t been in school for a while, so I need as much orienting as I can get.
Getting ready for that orientation, though, has me thinking, and as I so often do, connecting dots in my head that weren’t necessarily intended to be connected. In this case, I got to thinking about how intentional schools and work places are about orienting their new initiates into their particular way of life and how unintentional we in the church often are about teaching new believers what it means to be a part of the Body of Christ.
For me, the next several days will be spent learning how life at Yale works, what will be expected of me both academically as well as socially, and, of course, I will also learn what sorts of things will not be tolerated as a member of the Yale community.
That same sort of attention to orienting new people to a particular community, as I said before, can also be seen in the workplace. After their hiring, employees are taught the rules and expectations that govern life at their particular workplace. Expectations are (usually) clearly laid out for them and the consequences for not living up to those expectations or for breaking the rules are also spelled out.
Schools and work places seem, at least in general, to be very particular about orienting their people to a particular way of life so that their community can be as healthy and productive as possible.
Churches on the other hand (with a few exceptions, i.e. the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches) seem less and less interested in that sort of thing.
We seem to be much more focused on either expanding our membership rolls or simply not offending anyone.
We put few, if any requirements, on membership and once in, we are incredibly reticent to lay out the guidelines for life in our particular community for fear that people might leave taking their money and our sense of success with them.
As for consequences, we’ve convinced ourselves that grace frees us the reality that are any consequences for our actions.
Church, in many corners of the world, has become a free for all. The idea of orienting one’s life around a particular ethos or set of rules has been trumped by the idea that the highest good in life is to live a life free from all structure, rules, expectations, and consequences.
In short, discipleship has died and been replaced by a sort of Christian anarchy. In many corners of the church, the Christian life is no longer defined by reorienting one’s life to total submission to God. Rather, we have somehow, whether out of fear or ignorance or simple selfishness, convinced ourselves that who were before coming to Jesus was who we were intended to be. Therefore, any sort of change or conforming to a new way of life isn’t just unnecessary, it borders on the sinful.
In other words, there is no longer any need to be born again.
Such confusion, I think, should be expected when we don’t take seriously the need to teach the faith to new believers, to teach them what it means to live the sort of particular and peculiar life that constitutes being a disciple of Jesus.
If schools and workplaces stopped doing their orientations, confusion would reign and work would grind to a halt as students and employees either gave up in hopeless frustration or, in trying to do their own thing, the heretofore successful community would be disrupted and ultimately destroyed from the lack of discipline, cooperation, and unified direction.
Yet, for some reason, many of us in the church have convinced ourselves that such orientation, or as we call it, discipleship, isn’t really necessary anymore. Despite the particular and often difficult calling and teachings of Jesus, we’ve convinced ourselves that new believers will be ok just winging it on their own. And for some reason we think that that won’t have any effect on the life of the church.
As I’ve mentioned before, my father-in-law is a monk. He belongs to a healthy, vibrant, and very Christlike Benedictine monastery just outside of Boston. They are not a healthy, vibrant, and Christlike community by accident. They have gotten that way because they were incredibly intentional about learning the Benedictine way of life before they were ever are allowed to join. They continue to be that way because once they joined they were required to be of one mind with those already in the community and to be intentional about living a particular way of life.
Without such discipline and disciple, their community would fail.
Perhaps you are part of a similar healthy, vibrant, and Christlike community at your own local church. I can guarantee that it too didn’t happen by accident. It was formed by people intentional about adhering to a particular way of life and it has thrived because they have been intentional about orienting the new members of their community to their particular way of life. In other words, they’ve done a good job at discipleship.
I am convinced that if the church is to be a healthy, vibrant, and Christlike community in the 21st century, that is to say if the church is to be the people of God in the 21st century, then we must do a much better job of teaching our people what it means to be the people of God.
Instead of trying to make more converts, we need to start making more disciples. Instead of worrying about whether or not people will get upset and leave, we need to have the courage to boldly proclaim the gospel and hold each other accountable when we don’t live up that calling. And instead of focusing so much time, money, and effort on having cooler or hipper churches, we need to remember that the vast majority of Jesus’ time on Earth was spent teaching, not entertaining.
There is a lot of hope and promise for the future of the church, but it will only be realized when we find the courage and strength to start making better disciples.
Grace and peace,
Zack Hunt
If you love Jesus and Elvis and you’re tired of having to choose between the two, then this might just be the auction for you.
That is, if you’ve got an extra $30,000 or so laying around.
by Michael Gryboski, The Christian Post
As Thursday marked the 35th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death, a Bible that once belonged to the famous singer will be for sale next month along with other items at an auction in England.
Omega Auctions will be holding the auction on 8 September in Stockport. The Bible, said to have been given to Elvis by an uncle on Christmas 1957, has several annotations in it written by Elvis.
“To judge a man by his weakest link or deed is like judging the power of the ocean by one wave,” reads one entry written by the King of Rock-n-Roll.
Karen Fairweather, owner of the Omega Auction House, told The Christian Post that the Bible and scores of other Elvis items came courtesy an unnamed British collector.
“The collection was consigned by a British collector, who contacted us with a view to selling it to coincide with Elvis’ 35th Anniversary,” said Fairweather.
“There are 70 Elvis related items in the auction, all from the same collector, which is part of a larger collection of music memorabilia.”
Fairweather explained she was unsure how much the Bible, which is leather-bound with gold lettering and 1,600 pages long, would fetch come auction.
“The Bible is very fragile and was obviously well used. The cover obviously shows signs of its age and use, but both the cover and pages are all intact. There are many pages with sections underlined and annotations, probably around 20-30 annotations,” said Fairweather.
“It’s a difficult one to gauge due to the rarity and significance of the annotations. We were asked how much we expected the John Lennon tooth to go for last year, we said upwards of £10,000 and it went for £20,000. Our feeling is that it will sell around the £20,000 mark.”
It’s election season again.
I know because my Facebook page has gone from the occasional political post to a non-stop stream of sarcastic pictures, rants, and links “proving” that the other side is the incarnation of evil.
I don’t begrudge anyone the right to share their political opinions on Facebook or elsewhere, especially since I can ignore it with a simple click of the mouse. Thank you for that Mark Zuckerburg.
I also don’t begrudge who other people choose to vote for.
What bothers me is the “all that matters is winning”, “win at all costs” attitude that saturates not only political discourse, but also theological conversations in the church. By that I mean how so many of us so quickly resort to hateful, irrational attacks against strangers and even sometimes friends. We demonize our opponents as the incarnation of evil, accusing them of a whole host of malicious intentions, warning that if they “win the day” the country and/or the faith will subsequently come crashing down around us.
While the end of civilization and religion has never resulted from the outcome of a democratic election, we don’t care. All that matters is that our side wins and our opponent goes down in flames.
The same thing happens in the church, not least of all on the internet.
For many of us, there is only one way to think about the faith. If someone disagrees with that way of thinking, even in a small way, we feel free to tear them and their character to shreds, label them things like “heretic” or “instrument of Satan”, and then we warn others that if they listen to these people they too will be in danger of the fires of hell.
It’s as if Jesus’ call to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you can be temporarily suspended or outright ignored during election season or when it comes to proving our point in theological debates.
As Christians, the demonizing, irrational, and hateful rhetoric we spew on Facebook, across the internet, and around the water cooler is an embarrassment, not just to us, but the Lord we claim to embody.
Certainly there should be room to disagree and debate. Those things are important and necessary and we should do both with vigor. What is not necessary is the fear mongering, hateful cheap shot attacks, and irrational mudslinging that dominates so much of our, supposedly Christian discourse.
Despite what we may have been told or, frankly, want to believe, voting for the person on the other side of the aisle will not result in the end of the United States. Agreeing with the person on the other side of the pew will not lead to the imminent destruction of the church. In fact, whether we want to hear it our not, that person’s intentions are most likely just as virtuous as yours. And if that person does happen to “win the day” we do not have a Biblical calling to spend the next four years or whatever time they spend behind the pulpit, tearing them to shreds in the name of God.
Simply put, the way many of us in the church engage in political and theological discourse is anything but Christian.
If Christ is going to define our identity, then it is past time that we begin treating our opponents and enemies as Jesus did. Yes, he disagreed with them and yes he let them know it in no uncertain terms. But before we try citing his words about someone facing judgement in hell or being a brood of vipers, we need to remember that that sort of eternal judgment is Jesus’ prerogative, not ours.
In other words, as his followers our job is to follow his command to love our enemies, not condemn them to hell. If we disagree with them, then like it was for Jesus, the rightness of our argument will be found in our ability to live out the things we preach. Taking cheap shots, demonizing, or defaulting to irrational arguments will only “prove” the truth of our opponents accusations of our own hypocrisy.
As Christians we are certainly call to speak the truth, but we are to do so in love and humility knowing that our path to victory doesn’t come through the ballot box or by trouncing our opponents. It comes through crucifixion.
So this election season and beyond this election season as we live out disagreements and debates in the church, let us put a stop to the hateful Facebook posts, the drive by internet attacks, and the graceless water cooler rhetoric because all of it is beneath the dignity of the Body of Christ. Instead, let us find the courage to disagree and debate with the love, grace, and humility befitting of people who claim the name of Jesus.
If we can’t do that, then it won’t matter who gets elected or who stands behind the pulpit, because we will have become the very antichrists we so vigorously denounce.
Grace and peace,
Zack Hunt
I’ve heard of several churches that hold services in bars, even one that held services in a strip club.
Seriously.
But in just about every one of those cases the bar was closed or at least was not serving alcohol.
Apparently, the tap flows freely at this church on the Florida-Alabama state line.
I don’t have an issue with unholy places being repurposed as holy space. For me, it echoes the time when Paul held church in a dank, dirty prison cell.
But throwing back a Bloody Mary while the pastor preaches wearing Mardi Gras beads seems a bit inappropriate.
Maybe I’m just being a prude, but it seems to me that if we are going to repurpose unholy places as sacred space, then what we do during our time there should look differently than what normally goes on in that space. In other words, if we are going to reclaim space as sacred space, then what we do there should also be sacred.
Maybe I’m wrong, but for me, beads and Bloody Marys aren’t the sort of things to indulge in if, as we claim, we are standing on holy ground.
All that to say, if you want to hold services in a bar on Sunday mornings, go for it, but it’s probably best to hold off on the beads and Bloody Marys during service.
You can read the original story here.
Let this be a lesson to any church out there thinking about hosting their own fireworks show.
It’s probably not the best idea you’ve ever had.
Just watch this video and you’ll see why.
Unfortunately, 28 people were injured in the accident.
You can go here to read more about the fireworks show gone wrong.
